Augury and Hightouch joined the unicorn club

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Startup life is a story of births and deaths. This week confirmed this, and it confirmed that unicorn rounds are not dead.

Most interesting startup stories from the week

As happens often in the startup world, it’s been a week of beginnings and endings.

Thinking machines: Thinking Machines Lab, the new AI startup of former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, came out of stealth

this week, without confirming how much it may have raised from VCs. Meanwhile, Ilya Sutskever’s startup Safe Superintelligence (SSI) is reportedly raising around $1 billion.

Humane killing: Humane, the hardware startup behind the flawed AI Pin, announced that most of its assets have been acquired by HP for $116 million.

Money back guarantee: San Francisco-based startup Future Family launched a new IVF insurance product in the United States that could refund prospective parents if treatment doesn’t succeed after two rounds.

Low battery: Former Silicon Valley darling Nikola Corp. filed for bankruptcy this week. The hydrogen electric trucking startup failed to find a buyer or secure additional funds to maintain operations.

Most interesting VC and funding news this week

We thought the days of counting unicorns were behind us, but not so much. Plus, legal AI is hot, and looming budget cuts inspired a new biotech venture fund.

Quadricorn: Austin-based defense startup Saronic raised a $600 million Series C to build an autonomous ship factory, also quadrupling its valuation to $4 billion from its last round.

New horn: Six months after raising a $150 million Series C at a $1.25 billion post-money valuation, AI coding startup Codeium is in talks to raise a new round led by Kleiner Perkins at a $2.85 billion valuation, sources told TechCrunch. 

Joining the club: Hightouch, a startup co-founded by a former engineering manager at Segment that provides AI-powered marketing tools, closed an $80 million Series C round at a $1.2 billion valuation.

Augury, whose AI-based hardware detects malfunctions in factory machines, secured $75 million in equity funding as part of a Series F round that it is still closing. CEO and founder Saar Yoskovitz said this was an up-round valuing the startup at over $1 billion.

After the billion: After raising $1 billion to date since 2015, fintech Varo closed on $29 million out of the $55 million Series G it has been hoping to raise. Its CEO and founder, Colin Walsh, also recently announced he was stepping down.

Halfway: Sanas, which leverages AI to change call center workers’ accents in real time, closed a $65 million funding round, valuing the company at over $500 million.

Legal AI: AI-powered legal tech startup Luminance raised $75 million in a Series C funding round that follows several other deals closed by competitors, confirming the space is heating up.

New fund: Amid uncertainty on funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Altitude Lab’s Pre-seed Venture Fund will consider investing $100,000 to $250,000 in biotech startups that were qualified for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the NIH.

Last but not least

Andreessen Horowitz may have $45 billion in assets under management, but Marc Andreessen isn’t “chomping at the bit to take the firm public.” Speaking on this week’s Invest Like the Best podcast, a16z’s co-founder discussed his goal of building it into an enduring company.